Downtime and failures of wind turbines due to undesired loading of wind turbine blades, primarily due to icing is unacceptable in modern wind turbines. Similarly, even small ice accretion impacts the power curve of a wind turbine and, therefore, implies lost production. Furthermore, ice may shed from a blade and cause personal injuries or damages to technical installations.
Accordingly, methods for detection of icing and other undesired blade loading are desired to avoid such problems.
US2005276696 discloses a method for detecting ice on a wind turbine having a rotor and one or more rotor blades each having blade roots, including monitoring meteorological conditions relating to long conditions and monitoring one or more physical characteristics of the wind turbine in operation that vary in accordance with at least one of the mass of the one or more rotor blades or a mass imbalance between the rotor blades. The method also includes using the one or more monitored physical characteristics to determine whether a blade mass anomaly exists, determining whether the monitored meteorological conditions are consistent with blade icing; and signaling an icing-related blade mass anomaly when a blade mass anomaly is determined to exist and the monitored meteorological conditions are determined to be consistent with icing.
Whereas US2005276696 discloses a method for detecting blade icing, the inventors of the present invention have appreciated that an improvement of blade icing detection is of benefit, and have in consequence devised the present invention.